Why I left Instagram
In a couple of years, Instagram has evolved to be one of the most versatile platforms ever — and maybe the only Meta company still liked by youngsters. It started as a place to share your photography, and is now a place to do business, share your everyday life, and even — or should I say mostly — flirt and date. People don’t even ask for your number anymore, they ask for your insta’. Yet, despite its usefulness and even kind of social necessity, I decided to quit the platform.
Don’t think I hated the platform: I was a big fan, and in some geeky way still am impressed with what the dev team is achieving with it. Deleting my account was a sound decision, carefully taken after multiple self-test. It even took me about three years to completely disappear from “the gram”.
So why did I quit?
Well, there are multiple reasons for it, but to sum it all up: I felt like Instagram wasn’t doing me any good. I felt depressed all the time. I kept wanting to be someone else. To be the good-looking guy, the rich guy, the guy with the most this and that… I was constantly feeling like I had too few followers, and too few likes, as if it defined my life. Instagram and I had gone into a toxic relationship, and I needed to leave as far as I could. And one of the first big realizations I had wasn’t directly related to my mental health but to time.
Time and inactivity
disclaimer I feel like this part is valid for most of the things on the internet, especially social networks. Instagram, sure, but also, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Tik Tok…
I read something about that on the internet not long ago, and it never felt as true as when I am writing this: if a service is free, then they take their payment elsewhere, and in the case of social media, they take away your time.
I started using Instagram about 7 years ago when I was still a high schooler. Initially, it was just to share some photos, I started doing some photography and wanted to share them and get feedback. And by feedback, I mean attention. Well, I was a high school student, what do you expect? I started by connecting once a day for five minutes or so, looking at the pictures of my friends, and posting mine. Needless to say, it quickly went out of hand.
I started using Instagram to scroll time away. Not opening Instagram when unlocking my phone became impossible. I was too afraid to miss something, or, in the end, was driven by pure reflex. Then I would scroll, hours and hours of scrolling, to look at others’ pictures, and drawing, then with the introduction of stories: to look at others’ lives.
Of course, it is not because something is time-consuming that it is DeFacto “bad”. The real problem lies within the usefulness of this time. Was I being productive? Was I learning something? For the most part: no. I feel like you can convince yourself that what you are doing has a meaning but in reality, you are just looking at abs and ass pics all day long. Hours and hours spent unproductive and inactive. Like, scroll, share, repeat.
Of course, sometimes, you’d learn something useful. Today, most of my friends keep telling me they use it to learn about the news and to get information about topics of interest — ecology, feminism, and politics. But while it may have been a part of my usage, I would be lying in saying that most of my time wasn’t spent staring blankly at other luxurious lives. Feeding another problem that came with my usage of Instagram: the annihilation of my self-esteem.
Self-esteem
What do you share on Instagram? What do you want people to see? Do you want them to watch you doing something boring, or do you want to share the exciting thing about your life?
You don’t have to be a genius psychologist to see that most people — you may not be one of them, but I was — share what they feel will make them look nice. In the end, this is the same as in our real life. We want people to see us from our best angle. We share our holiday in the Maldives, our workout session, our abs — if we are hardworking enough to get some… We do it, and we love it because other people love it. We are constantly looking for approval. We love to share with everyone what is awesome about our lives. As if saying “Look how awesome it is to be me.”
And if we like it, the Instagram algorithm loves it! About ten years ago, you wouldn’t have imagined what an “influencer” could be. Then it happened. Men and women with awesome bodies, traveling the world, visiting all sorts of exotic places, eating in Michelin-star restaurants, sleeping in high-end hotels, all this while exposing themselves to the world, to us, the normal people.
We wake up every day to our normal life, one that is allegedly peaceful and worry-free. Then we spend hours and hours peeking at people who have life totally out of the ordinary and who brand it as if it is normal to do so. As if traveling to the seven continents in a year is normal. But you end up thinking this is what life is supposed to be life, and you become depressed about your normal life. Everything became tasteless. Your trips aren’t good enough because they are not exotic enough, your girlfriend isn’t good enough because she doesn’t look like Scarlett Johansson and doesn’t hit the gym ten hours a day… And what started as a normal day, just browsing pic on this new awesome app, end up in total disbelief of what life is about.
In the end, I was feeling as if I was nothing. I had nothing. I wasn’t rich, wasn’t traveling the world, and wasn’t that good-looking. My self-esteem fully crumbled over pics of others who seemed way better than me. And in the meantime, instead of trying to build a life that I would love, I just kept on scrolling, kept on being jealous, destroying my self-esteem. A scrolling that also ended up destroying my individuality.
Monotone
During my last year on the network, I was very much fond of star photography — I would have loved to write astrophotography but not sure it applied to my poor photos of the dark sky. And as a big fan, I followed lots and lots of photographers.
The idea was initially for me to be inspired, to find advice, and to develop myself into a better photographer. But when I look at it now, I feel like it helped me become nothing more than a copycat. Slowly but surely, I was completely hoisted by the mainstream way of doing photography. I wasn’t doing anything artistic; I was just trying to copy the result of others — who were also trying to copy the result of others…
It is something I feel strongly about Instagram today: everything and everybody is beautiful, but everything is the same. I wasn’t developing myself; I was trying to copy others. To be like the ones that seemed to have the life I wanted.
In terms of my photography crafts, it meant having an exotic foreground with an incredibly colorful milky way in the background. In terms of life, it meant having this style, wearing these shoes, using that phone… And while you think this will make you stand out; it only makes you like everybody else. Everybody likes the same thing, everybody likes to travel, to party, it seemed as if I stopped valuing individuality and only liked what everybody liked. What was then meant to express individuality became a tool for conformism.
On this matter, it seems Instagram has evolved quite a bit since I left the platform and you can find more individuality. Still, I feel like we are all trying to copy someone else — but it might be the same thing without it, who knows.
The downsides of leaving
Of course, it would be blind or stupid for me to say there is no downside of leaving the most used — after Tik Tok now I think — social media in the world.
I keep bumping into people who only mean to communicate is Instagram, so I cannot keep in contact. My friend didn’t stop using it and sharing their memory, and their strong moment on their feed — to which I have no access.
Instagram has become a social tool, essential in everyday life, and I became kind of an outcast. I don’t know the last trend, don’t go to the last restaurant — well I don’t go to instagramable restaurants anyway. And even though I am writing those lines with a smile on my face because I feel like what I have lost is incomparable to the freedom I gained, I still feel like it’s a miss sometimes.
In the end, Instagram and I weren’t fit to be anymore. But relationships are singular, and it doesn’t mean Instagram is all bad. It connects people and allows people to visit places on the other side of the world without consuming tones of CO2. And on the topic of relationships, I cannot even imagine the number of couples that formed via the network.
What was meant to be a blog to share pic has come a long way. And it will surely keep evolving until it finally will die to another “better” platform. Using it for the better or the worse is totally up to you.